Hong Kong unveils plan to align economy with China's goals

Hong Kong's government unveiled plans on Wednesday to significantly boost investment on innovation and technology as it aims to align the financial hub with mainland China's development goals.

City leader John Lee made the announcement as he unveiled Hong Kong's first Five-Year Plan, outlining its economic and social strategy to 2030.

The city will aim to make research and development account for three percent of gross domestic product after 2030, up from 1.63 percent in 2024, according to an official document.

China, the world's second-largest economy, has made scientific and technological self-reliance a priority, investing heavily in industries including semiconductors and artificial intelligence as a way to reduce dependence on the United States.

Its ruling Communist Party has used five-year plans modelled on those of the former Soviet Union to set its development targets and social priorities since the 1950s.

Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997 and is now a Chinese "special administrative region" with different economic and trade regulations to the mainland.

It has long benefitted financially from its semi-autonomous position as a free-market gateway for investment into and out of China, though Beijing has asserted greater control over the city's governance since quashing widespread protests in 2019.

Lee vowed that the inaugural plan would uphold Hong Kong's capitalist system.

"I want to make it very clear: the five-year plan is not a planned economy," he told reporters on Tuesday ahead of its publication.

Christine Loh, a former government official and lawmaker, told AFP that it will give Hong Kong a "useful governance tool" to implement longer-term, strategic planning.

The move was "primarily to synchronise" Hong Kong with China's national Five-Year Plan released in March, said Dylan Loh, an associate professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

To Beijing, Hong Kong's plan signals "proactive loyalty and a commitment to integrating into national development goals", he added.

"What it does portend, to me, is that Hong Kong will accelerate its economic intertwining with Beijing."

Hong Kong's Five-Year Plan also aims to speed up development of the Northern Metropolis -- a development project to build a massive tech hub near the border with mainland China.

First proposed in 2021, the project will eventually cover a third of Hong Kong's total land area.

Critics and locals have raised concerns over its potential environmental impact as well as the strain it will put on the city's public finances.

Eilo Yu, a political scientist who specialises in Hong Kong and Macau development, said the programme announced on Wednesday reflects "how the entire system (in Hong Kong) can be fully integrated with China's development".

The Northern Metropolis and Hengqin Island -- a landmass adjacent to Macau and three times its size -- are both part of China's vision, he said.

Yu added that Beijing hopes, through the "geographical integration" of the two cities, "to gradually dissolve the borders".